Books

Kate Raworth, of Doughnut economics fame (https://www.kateraworth.com/author/kate-raworth/), asked people on Twitter to suggest books for changing the world. "Within a week, thanks to the Twitterati, 300 fantastic recommendations came pouring in. Lucy Feibusch [then] compile[d] the long stream of suggestions into one incredibly valuable list by clustering them into broad thematic categories - and she topped off each one with a one-line summary and link. You can download the complete list here as pdf or as a Googlesheet."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 - 1955). Archeologist, geologist, Jesuit scholar and philosopher. Author of many books, including The Phenomena of Man. He popularized the concept of the noosphere, like the geosphere and the biosphere, i.e., the noosphere is the sphere of human thought and consciousness.

My talk:

I’m wearing my t-shirt depicting a scene from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch; he lived from about 1450 to 1516. I want to explain that what we gather tonight to talk about is what Bosch depicted in this painting, which is entitled “The Garden of Earthly Delights”. Though some may see what he portrayed as excess, I want to talk about a world of plenty, a true garden of earthly delights.

What’s important? What should we be talking about everywhere, now?

I believe that the most important issue to talk about is making the world work.

Bucky Fuller talked about the idea that the world can work.Bucky said: there is enough to go around for everybody on spaceship Earth: The world can work. Though there are distribution problems, as well as terrible political and economic issues, we can make the world work.

What Bucky said he wanted is to: “Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”

There are problems in the world, there will always be problems. But the problems that exist here on earth now, that keep the world from working, are problems that can be solved; and, then, the world would work.

I’m going to devote the rest of my life to making the world work. For those of you familiar with the bodhisattva vow in Buddhism, i.e., “to liberate all sentient beings”, this is my version of that vow: to make the world work.

As Ellen Johnson Sirleaf tells us:

“The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.”

We live in a world now dominated by 19th century memes, tropes and truisms:

Malthus said we live in a world of scarcity: that there is not enough to go around for everyone.

Max Weber pointed to the Protestant ethic: in sociological theory, the value attached to hard work, thrift, and efficiency in one’s worldly calling, that are deemed signs of an individual’s election, or eternal salvation.

Darwin emphasized these notions when he talked about survival of the fittest.

Now, in the 21st-century, we live in the world dominated by theories of competition, striving and doing better than the next guy, having more. The one with the most toys wins. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. We’re not entitled to a living: we have to earn a living.

McLuhan wrote about the idea that we are now living through War and Peace in the Global Village.

As Gerd Stern tells us: “We are all one.”

Arnold Toynbee, the historian said that the 20th century was the biggest event in human history because the 20th century was when we started to take care of each other.

We are now, in the 21st century, living through times of accelerating change and unparalleled social and cultural transformations. For decades I chronicled those changes in the domains of high technology. Now it’s time to change my focus and see how we can make the world work and work to make that happen.

Toynbee also said: “The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.”

Arthur C. Clarke said:

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system”

Clark is driving home two very important points in what he said. As advanced technology takes over more and more jobs, people will have, or have to find, different means of support; and to discover their meaning in life in ways that are not just from the job they do. Instead, the focus will shift to: What do you do?

The second part of his quote is not metaphorical. The creative destruction of the current political, economic and distribution systems is what will be the basis of making the world work.

There are two other quotes from important women on my homepage for WorldWorking.net:

As Margaret Mead told us, it is small groups of people who make the big changes:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

And, as Hannah Arendt wrote:

“Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination.”

My friend, Marty Perlmutter, asked me how I intended to make the world work. I replied “I wish I knew.” I do, however, have some ideas. I hope you have ideas, too, and that’s what we’ll talk about.

Here are six things that I’ve thought of that could go toward making the world work:

• Learning and communicating – What would it mean if the world worked? For many, this will be a difficult concept to comprehend, in light of all the world’s current problems. The transition from scarcity to having enough would be an extraordinary change in the lives of the majority of people now living on the planet.

What would happen to people’s jobs? What could happen to people’s identity? These ideas seem a distant future, now. How will it be best to communicate world working ideas for consideration and actions?

• Work toward working - Doing the research, extending Bucky’s work, to determine what needs to be done for the world to work. Determining what expenditures and personnel will be required. How much will it cost to make the world work? How much will it cost to find out how much world working will cost?

• Giving and gifts - Regular, often annual, even weekly or daily charitable and philanthropic giving, as a model for partial financing of making the world work. At the high end, this includes the billionaire’s pledge and, for others, tithing and the like. The gift, as a cultural way of living.

• The Noosphere - Connecting the world and creating the noosphere of Teilhard de Chardin. How do we create the noosphere, the sphere of mind and consciousness? Connecting everyone to everyone. Connect up as many people as possible, all around the world. Smart phones, along with Internet connectivity, are currently the best instruments for this action. How much will this cost? Probably single digit billions, based on contemporary technology.

• Military – The world’s military can provide the world’s best existing infrastructure for logistics and distribution. A global military alliance for World Working will be essential.

A world that works will require more cooperation and collaboration. We will need to trust in the capabilities of human beings to selforganize. With communication and connection, new paradigms can and will emerge. We are all of the planet earth, our home, and the world can work.

What will be important will be to communicate the facts that the world can work; make plans for how to make the world work; and, then, take actions to make the world work. Let’s make the world work: let’s do it now.

Let’s self-organize now, and talk amongst ourselves, for ten minutes.

Then we’ll talk, all together.

Talk in a circle.

The talk’s summary…

NOTES

As I’ve worked on this website for making the world work, I’ve made notes, on a near daily basis, about the ideas and concepts involved.

So here are my notes on world working notes:

Bucky said:

“There is enough to go around.”

Yes, there is enough to go around. To really be enough, however, it really all has to go around.

A NEWER DEAL

UBI won’t work unless all the basics required for life: i.e., housing, shelter, food, transportation, clothing, etc., are provided. Then, a universal basic income could supplement that series of basic provisions. At that point of this transition, in addition to the obligatory redefinition of work, there probably needs to be an additional redefinition: of money, and exchange. What is essential is allowing people to have what they need and what they want.

Such a role for the government and the military to be providers and provisioners of such basics would be a good transitional space for government and the military to be in, as we move into the future. This would be part of the transition as we move from representative and authoritarian governments toward the future: self organization.

Abraham Lincoln quote the Gettysburg Address paraphrased: that organization: …of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from this earth.

The old “globalism” is just a description of ways to do offshore trade and offshore distribution of work. The new globalism has to do with making the world work for the entire planet and all her inhabitants, throughout the globe.

How much does it cost to find out how much it would cost to make the world work?

Some forces driving prices in that regard would be difficult to assess because they might arise spontaneously or at various different times as people try to make the world work. A good example: it could only take in the probably low-to-mid single digit billions of dollars to equip every adult on the planet with a net-connected mobile device, one that had a connection to World Working, so that they could express their opinions of what will make the world work for them. In this way, the world working effort would know more about almost everyone; much of that data assessing can be done by machine.

What does making the world work mean?

The ultimate goal of making the world work would probably be something like “everything for everybody”. This would work if there were 3-D printing in excess as well fusion, to recirculate matter into energy, et al.

The near term goal is probably to define how minimal requirements can be met on a continuous basis for all:

housing and shelter in general;

food and other accoutrements for a fulfilling daily life; and,

how these essentials for world working could be equitably distributed so that people would feel they have enough even if they didn’t have everything.

For World Working it’s not “now or never” and it’s not “now or whenever” it’s “now, forever.”

How surprised everyone would be if the world started working.

“Beat your swords into shares.”

In addition, world working will mean a “sharing” social structure. Will ownership persist? Will people want to own shares, the way they now own land, or a habitat, etc.? Still, “shares” make sense coming from “swords”

Solving the distribution and set up issues involved with getting everyone a connected mobile smartphone, will enable us to foresee other problems having to do with improving distribution +.

The cessation of war and the concept of peace have a great connection to the possibility of World Working. We’ve been wanting peace, but have never been without war. Wars are about: territories, possessions, properties, perceptions, judgments and more.

If the World worked, we could obliterate many of these concerns, not all, but many. World working would enable new concepts of conflict resolution.

Jobs will disappear as different kinds of robotics and machine intelligence take over certain functions, and other functions are relegated in different ways. People will lose their jobs. But, not having a job doesn’t mean that you don’t have anything to do.

So, the determining factor is: what do you do? How to contribute to your community and to the planet? What roles are available and appropriate for the diverse cast of the world’s population?

World Working requirements:

First things first: If the whole world is going to work, the whole world has to be connected in order to have a voice in what’s to be. The smart phone noosphere and giving everyone access to communication so that they can have a voice and access to a world of other voices.

Then come essentials: like food and water, shelter and clothing, healthcare. All of these entail distribution issues. Access to community, however, to education, culture and the arts, these present different barriers to implementation on a global, local level.

We need to start planning and taking actions toward making the World Work now: there’s no time to lose.

We have had many successes and many failures as we’ve attempted to steer technology and control it. In both weaponry and with bio technology we’ve dodged many “bullets”. Now, we face similar and analogous issues in the control of machine intelligence and related technologies, for example, 3-D printing, robotics, et al.

World Working is an alternative narrative to the current social economic and political organizations in place around the globe. We need this new view of how to proceed with life on earth if we will survive.

We’ve had moon shots now we need earth shots.

Universal basic needs:

These should be provided to the persons in the countries most needing them. First start at the bottom, and from those countries develop delivery and distribution strategies for other countries..

In order to provide basic needs - food, shelter, water, healthcare, et al. – infrastructure will be vitally important. Roads and other infrastructure that are to serve in the service of distribution channels and living structures.

All the people in the world are the customers of world working.

Tithing: A reverse Lehman structure: 1% of the first million 2% of the second etc., …5% of every million there after.

We live in a world dominated by 19th century memes, tropes and truisms: Malthus said we live in a world of scarcity: that there is not enough to go around for everyone. Max Weber pointed to the Protestant ethic and the notion that those who do the best go to heaven. Charles Darwin emphasized both of these when he talked about survival of the fittest.

So we now live in the 21st-century, in the world dominated by theories of competition, striving and doing better than the next guy, having more. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. We have to earn a living, we’re not entitled to a living. The one with the most toys wins.

Be good or you won’t get into heaven. Good means doing what the church says not what the church does.

World Working Will require more cooperation and collaboration. We will need to trust in the capabilities of human beings to self organize. With communication and connection, new paradigms can and will emerge. We are all on, the planet earth is our home and the World can work.

Those 19th century notions captured the 20th century. In the 20th century, Bucky recognized that we were all one, living on the spaceship hurtling through the solar system: spaceship Earth. Based on that observation he realized that the world could work. This realization of his has the potential to transform the 21st-century.

Warmongering and the reward of bad actors are two other much older ways of thinking from the past.

All of these patterns and ways of thinking dominate the contemporary weltanschauung.

If we start really taking care of each other that will go along way toward the world working.

Is world game a model for World Working?

Mine the world design science decade documents for materials for World Working.

This, world working.net/, is a website, not an organization. It is my hope that we, as the people of the earth, will take it upon ourselves, to self-organize in order to make the world work. We are the organization.

I’m going to devote the rest of my life to making the world work. For those of you familiar with the bodhisattva vow in Buddhism, this is my version of that vow: to make the world work.

World game

One of the actions listed on the World Working website should be the continuation of Bucky Fuller’s idea of the world game. The game that people could play to make the world work.

The gift, as a cultural way of living, and the book, The Gift. The potlatch.

UBN - universal basic needs: fulfilling these needs through the private sector. In the beginning, without government help, this might well insure, in part, that the end result will not be under autocratic control. N.B., business monopolies are certainly similar to autocracy in their structure and operations

WORKING

For World Working to work, it has to be done in stages. World Working will have to be modular.

World Working, from my point of you, is predicated on any number of assumptions. These include the ever accelerating march of technology. This is especially so in the areas of machine intelligence, robotics and in general automation. Other advances in other sciences, e. g., biology, might well improve areas of technology like storage at the same time as they provide potential cures and treatments for illnesses that have the promise to enhance the lives of all, including future innovators and discovers.

Despite current efforts to anticipate the pairing between humans and machines intelligence, machine intelligence will, in the future as now, replace and eliminate and otherwise reconfigure jobs and employment opportunities. In the short term, re-training efforts and redirection energies for people displaced from jobs will accommodate some and not help others. Sooner or later, attitudes about jobs, work, and identity will have to undergo changes and probably thorough transformations.

The same job-displacing technologies, in a rose-colored lens view of the future, may also enable implementation of some of the communication and caregiving actions already outlined elsewhere at this website.

The optimism implied in scenarios where people no longer have to work, have their needs provided for, and can choose their own lifestyles is, for some, scary and intimidating. Too many science-fiction narratives have speculated that without the purpose of a job and employment, people will flounder and not know what to do. I believe they will self-organize in ways which we cannot now imagine.

The model of the founding of the United States of America: with the original documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, et al, those who developed the US government provided a model of self-organization that was prescient and far reaching. It grew out of a rebellion against what was perceived as a tyrannical monarchy. In addition, those creating those documents had a whiff of the industrial revolution, then the air.

We are now in far different times. We live in times of continuous, accelerating and relentless change: in technology development, in medical and biological development, and in social development. These accelerating forces are forcing us to consider and make many tumultuous changes and decisions about the nature of humankind’s future.

Alfred North Whitehead quote:

“Wise men obey the laws that they themselves make.”

Biggest paradigm shift that could enable World Working would be the transition from competitiveness to cooperation and caring. From the survival of the fittest to the survival of the planet.

The way I’m working now toward making the world work is to think very seriously about the concept of World Working and all the problems associated with getting there. In addition to thinking deeply about these issues, I’m communicating with people who I think can make a difference in the effort to make the world work.

SCALING:

One of the most important questions for making the world work is to investigate how things scale. There is no one right answer to the scaling issue.

It was clear to me that neural network computing would be a working alternative to the brittleness of existing artificial intelligence. It wasn’t, however, until Geoff Hinton and the Google people realized how to make NNs work. This would take massive amounts of data and enormous computing power to finally allow neural network architectures and algorithms to properly scale and more fully function in their pattern recognition capabilities.

Another example is the experience of chef Andres in Puerto Rico. Without much government intervention, if any at all, and only volunteer help, he was able to provide, in the space of weeks, 3 million meals to the people of hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico.

Scaling will be important as we try to fill UBIs (universal basic needs).

THREE THINGS MARTY P:

Marty Perlmutter outlined the three major issue questions I will be faced with as I endeavor to make the world work.

These include:

• fascistic and. autocratic governments,

• nuclear weapons and

• the environment.

He notes that people will say: without solving these problems, how can the world ever work? He pointed to Drawdown as an example of providing some of the solutions in the ecology area.

FEAR OF OPTIMISM:

When I presented talks about World Working, that include much of the material found on this website, I was surprised at the response from many in the audience. People recoiled from the optimism of my message. The idea that the world could work seemed too much. It seemed like viewing the world through rose-colored lenses to them.